Give up the car? Unthinkable ... then wonderful

By Steven Lewis

19 August 2018 — 11:09pm

I grew up in a car culture – the Canadian prairie province of Saskatchewan. Turn 16, take the test, and embark upon a life behind the wheel. The car was muscle, romance and freedom. Today in Saskatchewan there are seven cars registered for every 10 people. Excluding kids, people unable to drive, and the very old, it’s about one person, one car. And that doesn’t include the trucks.

Driving is in my DNA. The car I left in the custody of friends is a manual shift – an endangered species in Canada but central to my driving aesthetic. I like road trips, driving alone listening to the radio. I’ve been at it for half a century. I can’t imagine giving it up.

We’re a family of three on a three-year (or more?), job-related adventure in Melbourne. Our choice: house, yard and space in the outer suburbs, or proximity to Melbourne’s central delights?

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We chose central, and no car.

Going car-less isn’t a sacrificial act of civic gratitude to our adoptive city. It’s a pragmatic choice. We don’t deny what we’ve given up: convenience, spontaneity, and outside rush hour, shorter trips from A to B. No doubt we’d see more of Melbourne if we could roam in our own vehicle.

On the tram I can daydream, survey the street scenes, or if I want to fit in, stare at my smartphone.

I walk by some gorgeous cars every day, from dignified Mercedes to sporty Porches. I love them but I don’t want to live with them. Cars are expensive to buy, repair and house. I feel liberated in my auto-free state. No need to think about where to park it or where to get it fixed.

On the tram I can daydream, survey the street scenes, or if I want to fit in, stare at my smartphone. Sure it’s slower, but in the car, there is only one responsible use of time: focus, focus, focus, on the road, the lights, the other drivers.

Going car-free revives dormant skills and connects your senses to the rhythms of the city. There are small satisfactions such as mastering the tram routes, and the heady rush on first alighting at Flinders Street and Southern Cross stations. I’m still awed by my Myki card that not only responds to my tap on, tap off, but also talks to my bank. I plan better and more intentionally. For the first time in my life I have a grocery trolley that I have learnt to pack with a stevedore’s eye for efficiency.

Melbourne has a magnificently benign climate. (The palm trees pretty much give that away.) I’m from a country with long and cold winters that make a few hundred metres to a transit station a numbing and treacherous ordeal. Here the fiercest day may incline you to button up your light coat. It is an ambulator’s paradise where a 10-minute walk to transit is more gift than burden.

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The no-car option is not quite a no-brainer; Melbourne’s public transport system is nothing to rhapsodise over. Coverage is pretty good, but rapid it isn’t, especially once you step off the trains. Without more dedicated tram and bus lanes, the system will continue to be hostage to the congested car traffic it’s supposed to alleviate.

On foot we have beaten the tram up Chapel Street from High Street to Toorak Road. When our bikes arrive with our furniture, my Myki will be semi-retired.

Environmental guilt and principled antipathy to cars will convert a few people to transit. Faster trips will convert a lot more.

Beyond the CBD Melbourne is a low-density city, which creates a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma for transit. If public transport is infrequent and slow, middle-class people won’t use it. If middle-class people don’t use it, there’s no business case or political support for improving it.

Cars are less our servants than our masters.Credit:Justin McManus

Doing nothing guarantees costly failure – look no further than the Greater Toronto Area, a gridlocked horror show where rush hour never ends and no amount of highway construction can keep up with the population growth. As Melbourne careens towards 8 million people in the next few decades, will it be freeways or rail, steep tolls or subsidised car travel? It is both an engineering and a philosophical choice. Transit is communal and egalitarian; cars are individualistic and the machines and the pricing of fuel and tolls – and transit – reflect the political and economic pecking order.

Sure it was easier for us – we’ve moved hemispheres and we’re voluntarily reprogramming. Even so, I thought it would be much harder to cashier the car. It does demand a new perspective on space and time. A proper accounting reveals that it also saves money, but I don’t think that’s the most compelling argument. It’s a small step toward personal reinvention, and a glimpse of a reimagined way of living. The pleasures of driving are undeniable, much like the pleasures of smoking. But once democratised, cars are less our servants than our masters, with voracious appetites for real estate and costly infrastructure.

Maybe I’m in the honeymoon phase, and car-free will soon grow tiresome. Somehow I doubt it; often we underestimate our adaptability. Cars and I had a good run. Melbourne offers a viable option, and so far, so good.